A rumbling shook the labyrinth walls as they descended. The paces of some gargantuan beast could be felt by their aftershocks. Caution would need to be exercised if Lieze wanted to retain the number of thralls she'd entered the dungeon with.
Enveloping darkness moved in to shadow the dark spots between sconces. Light disappeared altogether near the bottom, where only the dim glow of their lanterns illuminated the gloom. The final step marked an exit where the corridor shot out at either side to create a chamber of magnificent proportions. Lieze could glimpse neither the furthest wall nor the ceiling.
"It's huge… are these 'sanctums' normally as big as this?" She asked, her voice bouncing from the distant and shrouded perimeter.
"No… the last one we reached in the Deadlands was a cramped set of corridors." Roland answered, "We battled with a Minotaur then… and we barely escaped with our lives. I wonder what sort of monster could make this space its domain…"
"What are we wasting time standing around for?" Drayya pushed through the vanguard, "All we're doing is painting targets on our backs. Let's get a move on!"
The open space made for a good opportunity to organise the thralls into something resembling an army. Without Rot Behemoths, Flesh Elementals, or Briarknights at hand, Lieze was forced to rely on the capabilities of her Horrors to vanquish whatever threat was guarding the sanctum. Placing herself and the Deathguards squarely behind the vanguard, she set the thralls on a forward march and followed in their wake.
It wasn't long before they came face-to-face with a pair of pillars rising from the floor. Lieze half-expected them to portend a grand staircase leading up to an oversized treasure chest brimming with treasure, but no such feature awaited them. In that way, the pillars appeared entirely out-of-place.
"Lieze…" Drayya's hand took hold of her shoulder, "Look."
Her finger went up, aimed towards the inky darkness. Lieze narrowed her eyes and spotted something resting atop the columns - a great, cubic partition sculpted from solid granite. She made out a series of engravings snaking across the surface like the path of some parasitic worm.
"What is this?" She wondered, "I can't make most of it out…"
Something about her gaze activated a long-discarded protocol in the structure's heart. With a shunt of crumbling stone, the chamber was caught in a sudden quake, and the pillars - against all rightful logic - began to move.
"It's a Golem!" Marché yelled, "Get the thralls out of its path!"
Like the rising tide, Gravewalkers and Horrors surged crescent-wise to avoid being flattened by the construct's enormous leg. A pair of spotlight fires roared to life in the creature's hollow sockets, and a sound like the tumbling of a landslide threatened to bring the ceiling down.
Then there came the lasers - or beams, if you would prefer. Concentrated blasts of a magical persuasion pouring from the Golem's eyes like geyser breath, carving a smouldering path of flame through stone and thrall alike. Lieze had just enough time to dive before one such laser incinerated the spot she was standing on.
She turned on her back and looked up to the hovering lines of text over the Golems' head.
Supreme Golem
Level 100 Construct
HP - 33,610 / 33,610 MP - 0 / 0
BODY - 100 MIND - 0 SOUL - 0
Level 100.
Magnitudes of strength above anything else Lieze had encountered in the dungeon, with enough HP to reliably shake off even the most fearsome of attacks. And what about the lasers? Lieze's Golem couldn't shoot lasers.
"Wait…" She paused, "My Golem!"
[Summon Supreme Flesh Golem] Activated
Remaining Heavenly Favours - 3
Before the granite colossus could wreak more havoc, she focused her mind and willed her most devastating thrall into existence. Interlocking sigils penned in a tongue offensive to mortal eyes expanded outwards from a focal point on the ground. Spindly tendrils clawed at the edges of the abyss that wriggled within. The army of thralls had just enough time to manoeuvre themselves out of the way before a muscular, flesh-valleyed head emerged from the circle.
"Move the thralls around to the Golem's rear!" Lieze's voice was barely audible over the chaotic, writhing orchestra, "The Flesh Golem isn't powerful enough to defeat it! We need to find some kind of weakness in its construction!"
With two 50-feet tall constructs in play, there suddenly wasn't much room to move around - especially not when they began exchanging blows. As Lieze's followers commanded their thralls to round the chamber's outer perimeter, the Golems tempered their incontestable strength against one-another. The experience was like watching a boxing match in slow-motion after both combatants had enjoyed a few drinks.
Golem's HP - 27,909 / 33,610
Flesh Golem's HP - 21,144 / 26,976
There wasn't any finesse or artistry to be found in their bout. With each blow, the chamber was decorated in equal shares of still-twitching muscle fibres and crumbling debris. It was a match of durability and strength - one the Flesh Golem was fated to lose if Lieze couldn't find a way of tipping the battle in her favour.
"The Golem must have a weakness…" Her breaths shortened as she sprinted to keep up with the army, "A core… or a heart… something responsible for its animation."
Ideas swam in her brain. Boiling jets of hot fire emerging from the construct's eyes illuminated its amateurish construction. The head, body, and arms were nothing more than slabs of rock - excellent for armour and resilience, but a problem when it came to mobility. She envisioned some sort of alchemical device lodged within that would return the Golem to a lifeless statue if destroyed.
Her hand delved into the Bag of Holding. Her fingers found the fleurs of a headpiece by sheer power of imagination. The Circlet of Teleportation's silver finish reflected the Golem's fire as she reached out to yank a Gravewalker back from its charge, crowning the thrall's rotting scalp with the circlet and descending into a state of rapid communion for barely longer than an instant.
Lieze's MP - 1,851 / 1,885
A [Delayed Corpse Explosion], with a timer set for two seconds. Her next thoughts were esoteric, transmitting along spiritual wavelengths in a haze of ritualistic patterns to command that the Gravewalker make use of the circlet. As soon as the order came, its body vanished, only to reappear a good 50 feet up in the air - right next to the Golem's cubic head.
Then the thrall was no more. Blood and offal conjoined in a bloom of carnage, falling like crimson hailstones. A section of the Golem's head was punched through by the rupture, revealing a blinding whitelight within the hollowed centre. Lieze had found her mark.
"Focus your spells on that light!" She commanded.
Drayya, Marché, Roland, the Deathguards - every last necromancer in the chamber revelled in the opportunity to counterattack. Torrents of coagulated blood rose and split apart like globules of crimson toffee in the air, forming into javelins aimed squarely at the Golem's exposed weak point. A thick stench of iron lingered in the nose as projectiles splattered against the construct's sandy body.
Golem's HP - 19,509 / 33,610
Golem's HP - 15,013 / 33,610
Golem's HP - 11,520 / 33,610
-But it wasn't enough. An unconscious intelligence factored into the Golem's creation identified the source of its troubles with pinpoint accuracy. Slabs of granite dislodged from its body to section off the damaged regions, protecting the core from further onslaught.
Lieze would have clicked her tongue had the fight not already been decided by her actions. The Golem was capable of protecting its weakest point, but the damage had been done. A quick glance at either of the constructs revealed that the Flesh Golem's HP had been shunted into the lead. All that remained was to avoid being crushed under either combatant until the battle was over - a surprisingly difficult prospect, considering the ferocity of their bout.
"Let's just… make ourselves scarce for now…" Lieze muttered, "There's no need to endanger ourselves when all we need to do is wait."
With great care, she and the Deathguards guided the army back to the stairwell. A few stragglers were inevitably caught up in the titanic brawl, their lives cut short by a misplaced step or two, but the Golems were fortunately so slow that avoiding them was a matter of simple analysis.
"I much prefer this to the Minotaur…" Ronald said, both hands held over his scalp to defend from any stray rubble, "Let me tell you, there's nothing that gets your heart racing better than a bull-headed, axe-wielding beast chasing you through a maze rife with dead ends and pitfalls."
"Less talking, more walking." Drayya shoved him from behind, "I'm in no mood to be scraping any of you off the floor."
Once they were ferried into the stairwell's haven, the battle became more of a spectacle than anything else. Tremors rose to test the dungeon's sturdiness with every heft of the titans' weight. A mash of melted bone became visible beneath the Flesh Golem's lacerations. It would be impossible for a mere spectator to predict the victor, though Lieze was anything but a mere spectator.
She witnessed the Golem's HP steadily decreasing as the seconds ticked by. Whenever its core was exposed by a well-placed strike, more of its granite form relocated to patch the injury. With time, however, its body became cracked and unsuitable for protection. When the shining core was well and truly unprotected, Lieze used her influence over the Flesh Golem to guide its strikes, landing continuous strikes on the vulnerable heart.
It was a satisfying thing, watching the lifeforce of her enemies deplete in real time. The Golem's HP descended below the 1,000 mark, then the 500. When the alchemical engine infusing its body with artificial life began to fail, its limbs came down to rest at its sides, and the construct exposed itself to a mortal blow.
A single balled fist from the Flesh Golem sank into the face of its crumbling adversary. There was a flash of instantaneous light, an orchestra of cracking glass, and an explosion large enough to knock Lieze and all of her allies - including every last thrall under her command - to the ground.
Hot air buffeted her face. A Gravewalker slipped from its perch on the step above and landed right on top of her. She gagged as the corpse's rot-stink filled her nostrils. A stern push saw the thrall off her and rolling down the staircase alongside many other of its brethren.
[Golem Defeated]
Boss Threat Level - Medium (x50 xp)
5,000XP rewarded
Quest "Dungeon Master" Completed!
Reward - 1,900xp
Level Up!
You are now level [44]
HP+5 MP+50
MIND + 1
Lieze licked her lips. There was something like electricity dancing across her tongue - remnants of magic lingering in the air following the Golem's death. When she stood, a cloud of smoke had descended upon the chamber. Blood pooled into the gaps between the cobble at her feet.
"Urgh…" Drayya rubbed her forehead, "It's a good thing we moved when we did…"
"The stench from that Flesh Golem is…" Roland puffed out his cheeks to prevent a gag reflex, "I'm going to need a bath once we get back to the city…"
"...Gather up the thralls and make your way back to the entrance." Lieze sniffed, "I'll scour this room for any signs of treasure in the meantime."
"There's no need for that." Roland stood to meet her, "Once the guardian of the sanctum is defeated, a Teleportation Circle appears in the room to provide a simple way out."
He pointed into the smoke, where a cerulean hue was burning through the poisoned air.
"You'll find a treasure chest, too." He continued, "Shall we go have a look at our spoils?"